Top all-time · #1588
A
Arvind Gupta
Personal blog · arvindguptatoys.comscienceculture
Arvind Gupta's personal blog at arvindguptatoys.com covers science and culture. Since 2009, 48 different Hacker News readers have linked it 62 times, most often “Toys from Trash”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
No feed foundVisit the blog
62mentions?
48HN people?
2009–2026first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- Toys from Trash5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-01-10
- Books and Toys for Children by Arvind Gupta3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-01-07
- Toys from Trash3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-07-04
- Toys from Trash3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-04-18
- Toys from Trash3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-04-18
- Arvind Gupta's toys3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-06-22
- A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-02
- Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland: A Fictional Tale Exploring Physics (1940) [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-02-20
- /arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-12
- /arvindgupta/rats.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-03
What Hacker News says?
Completely agree. I'd like to also recommend another book in the spirit of Ecclesiastes: Tolstoy's Confession. A Confession was published shortly after Anna Karenina and at a time when Tolstoy (in his fifties) was widely considered to be one of the world's preeminent writers. He had vast wealth, fame, and a large family. Nevertheless, he was so overwhelmed by the vanity of existence that he was convinced suicide was…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/confessions-tolstoy.pdf
on “Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?”Submitted The Book of Experiments (1958) [pdf] as a story · 231 points
HN discussion== Vim or Emacs == Just pick one and force yourself to use it to the exclusion of other editors. Future you will thank you later, because you'll still be using it 20 years from now. "We are typists first, programmers second" comes to mind. You need to be able to move chunks of code around, substitute things with regexes, use marks, use editor macros, etc. == 6.824: Distributed Systems == http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf
on “Ask HN: What source code is worth studying? ”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 139 points
HN discussionAsimov wrote a great essay on this - see A5 in this. http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/asimov-electron.p...
Comment linking /arvindgupta/asimov-electron.pdf
on “Rosetta Probe Discovers Organic Molecules on Comet”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 60 points
HN discussionSurely you're not in mathematics just to pass exams and absorb/explore at whatever rate teachers and classes set? You should really give such tools a try. If proprietary ones aren't your cup of tea, play with Octave (and its Octave Forge package collection), Maxima, and R, and if you want throw in Julia, SymPy, Axiom, or Metamath too. See what they offer and what people have done with them. Or what if you programmed…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/asimov-on-numbers.pdf
on “TI removes access to assembly programs on the TI-83 Premium CE”Submitted The Silence Barrier [pdf] as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThere is this soviet science fiction story with a similar premise, but self-replicating machines: Crabs On The Island (Russian 1958, English 1968) (original: Kraby idut po ostrovu), by Anatoly Dneprov http://arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/15r.pdf
Comment linking /arvindgupta/15r.pdf
on “New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code”Submitted Paul Goodman: Compulsory Miseducation (1964) [pdf] as a story · 28 points
HN discussionI was lucky to get hold of 70 of these books in absolute mint condition (except for rusted stapler pins) last year after years of futile search in secondhand markets all across India. My dad, a book hoarder extraordinaire in his own right, managed to connect with a retired journalist who apparently stumbled upon them in Nepal and bought them at like less than a dollar a kilo or something! For anyone interested in sc…
Comment linking /
on “Soviet children’s books became collectors’ items in India”Submitted Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland: A Fictional Tale Exploring Physics (1940) [pdf] as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI do not see Arvind Gupta marvelous website mentioned so here it is: http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html It is called "Toys from trash". From time to time we go there with my younger daughter and we randomly pick an activity. Compared to the book there is little text, explanations being mostly visual. That makes it accessible to non English speaking children.
Comment linking /toys.html
on “The Book of Experiments (1958) [pdf]”Submitted Why sky is blue as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhumanoids who continue the endless pursuit of some vague promise of capitalist fulfillment (work hard, be rich, be happy), ignoring the fact that the direct opposite of such a lifestyle leads to a much more healthier, happier life which remains in touch with our basic, primal human existence. You'd enjoy the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pd…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf
on “How I Ate No Food for 30 Days”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 3 points
HN discussionConfession by Leo Tolstoy. (About the meaning of life :) http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/confessions-tolst...
Comment linking /arvindgupta/confessions-tolstoy.pdf
on “Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?”Submitted The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953) [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAsimov wrote about precisely this, and hypothesised, well, exactly this, in his essay “The asymmetry of life” in the collection “The Left Hand of the Electron” - in 1972 - right down to gamma ray chirality due to electron spin asymmetry affecting an initial randomly distributed population. See pages 65-67 of the below (pdf pages, not book pages). http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/asimov-electron.p...
Comment linking /arvindgupta/asimov-electron.pdf
on “Cosmic Rays May Explain Life’s Bias for Right-Handed DNA”Submitted A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSomewhat related? "Soap Bubbles" (C. V. Boys) [1] was a book from over 100 years ago that reads like a series of lectures to a science class on the physics of soap bubbles. I was impressed with the step-wise manner in which the book proceeds from simple observations of soap bubbles and how they behave in order to develop more complex theories as to why they behave that way and the physics behind it. Logic can feel s…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/soap-bubbles-boys.pdf
on “Technical Time Travel: On Vintage Programming Books”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRemember the 90s? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pa6SGYWADU E.D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote "Cultural Literacy" in 1987, with an update in 2002 as "The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy". It's a huge collection of thousands of words/phrases/concepts/devices/people/places/etc, across multiple categories, that most Americans will already know the majority of their meanings, or at least find them somewhat familiar. I person…
Comment linking /arvindgupta/asimov-on-numbers.pdf
on “Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?”Submitted Seymour Papert Mindstorms [93] [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionArvind Gupta ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Gupta ) is a well-known science educator/toy inventor who teaches Science/Technology using low-cost/trash items. His very popular TED talk titled Turning trash into toys for learning : https://www.ted.com/talks/arvind_gupta_turning_trash_into_to... Videos/Photos at website : https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/ Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@arvindguptatoys These a…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects”Submitted Arvind Gupta's toys as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYes, there is also a simple derivation in Boys's classic book, "Soap Bubbles: Their Colors and Forces Which Mold Them", p. 136. [1, 2] [1] pdf link (it is out of copyright): http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/soap-bubbles-boys... [2] google books link (free preview), go to the very last page for the color plate
Comment linking /arvindgupta/soap-bubbles-boys.pdf
on “Why soap bubbles are colourful and windowpanes are not”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe smell yes! This may sound weird and is completely unrelated but I felt the smell of new Apple products comes very close to that of Misha magazines. Noticed it with every Apple hardware I bought so far starting from the 1st generation Macbook. Science books from Mir, Raduga and Progress publications - https://mirtitles.org/ Children's books - http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/ Last time I checked, I couldn't find an…
Comment linking /
on “Soviet Children’s Books That Broke the Rules of Propaganda”Submitted Toys from Trash as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
